Henning Makholm wrote: > Scripsit Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> > > On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:42:47 +0200, Wouter Verhelst > > >>Those are excellent reasons to give the package away and/or to start > >>looking for comaintainers. > > > In theory, you are right. In practice, we have more than a couple of > > packages in that state with the maintainer flatly refusing to give > > away the package or even allow co-maintenance. > > It is already the case that "flatly refusing to give away the package > or even allow co-maintenance" *should* not happen at all and, if it > does happen, *should* not prevent the package from eventually being > given to somebody who is willing to keep it properly maintained. > > I agree that our mechanism for turning those "should"s into "do"s are > not, empirically, always working well. But simply adding by fiat > another requirement for the maintainer to flatly refuse to follow is > not likely to help solving the underlying problem. We have such a mechanism? I didn't know this. Investigating, one sees some words in Policy 3.3 and Developer's Reference 7.4 on the topic, but the words do not seem to speak of intransigent maintainers, only of inactive ones. Verse 6.1.4 in the Constitution seems arguably to give power to the Technical Committee to do what you suggest, but if so, the power remains theoretical: it is not in practice used. Never having personally encountered a serious problem with an intransigent maintainer, I do not know much about it, but now you make me curious. If there are interesting facts I didn't know hereto about the Project, please elaborate.
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